Varieties of Dishonesty
by Eli H. Newberger, M.D. (6 December 2003)
(This lesson is based on an excerpt of the book "The Men They Will Become: The Nature & Nurture of the Male Character"
by Dr. Newberger.)
Chapter 11 in my book "The Men They Will Become" addresses the subject of honesty in boys. This section discusses the different attitudes towards cheating. This is the first section of the chapter.
Father had a joint
The father of a 9 year-old boy told me that he returned from an overseas business trip this year carrying a joint of
marijuana in his luggage. One of his business hosts abroad, wanting to show the utmost hospitality, drug consumption is widespread
in their industry, had put the joint in his houseguest's bedroom as an amenity, much as hotel staff might leave a chocolate
treat on a pillow.
Back home, the father put the joint in the top drawer of his bureau at home & forgot about it. A week later, the
drawer was open one morning as he dressed for work while his son was in the room. His son saw the joint, picked it up &
asked, "What's this, Dad?"
"It caught me off guard. I've thought a lot about drugs & what I'll say to him when he's 13 or 14. Basically, I plan to tell him honestly about my experience with drugs as a teenager, but I'm going to tell him that times have changed a lot since then & what was okay for me at 14 isn't okay for him at 14."
"What did you say to your son about the joint?" I asked. "Oh, I said it was a hand-rolled cigarette that I had been offered
at a business dinner & kept as a curiosity:' He went on to tell me about other male friends of his who consumed drugs extensively as adolescents &
who intend to lie if their own children ever ask them whether they consumed drugs when they were boys.
This man obviously wanted to preserve a certain moral clout w/his son when they inevitably will have to address the
subject of drugs in a few years. (One could
argue that the subject is timely even for 9 year-olds these days.) He said he wanted to be able to say, "I did it then, but I don't do it now & I don't want you to do it because
drugs are so much more dangerous now.
They were dangerous even when I was a kid, but I was lucky. Now I know more about drugs. I want you to know what I know,
because you might do what I did & not be as lucky as I was:"
Perhaps if the father hadn't been caught by surprise & wasn't in a hurry to get to work, he could have handled his
son's discovery & question more truthfully, using it as an opening to the subject of drugs that all parents should begin to discuss with schoolboys.
Impulsively, he evaded the subject with a partial truth. He misled his son in the service of what he saw as his responsibility to protect his son from harmful exposure to drugs. He didn't want his son to be able to justify his own possible consumption of drugs by saying: My dad does it, why shouldn't I?
Many varieties of honesty
Honesty, which at first glance looks like one of the simpler topics to be dealt with in character-building, is actually
one of the most complex, as even this mundane father-son incident shows. Ethicists often assume that honesty is the obvious policy of choice except for extreme cases in which lying, or one of its related avoidances of the truth, might be morally justifiable, i.e., should a soldier captured in battle tell his captors false information about the deployment &
strategies of his own army, or should a physician tell a terminally ill & deeply depressed patient what he knows & estimates to be the patient's condition & life expectancy if the patient asks.
Extreme examples, however, don't necessarily help us make wise choices in commonplace situations.
The ambiguity of dishonesty is that much of it is habitual & scarcely recognized. You could ask a copywriter for an advertising agency if he is aware that much of what he writes is, at best, distortion & he will probably resist the characterization; he is
just doing "marketing:' You can ask the preacher or speechwriter if he realizes that many of his generalizations wouldn't
stand up to close factual scrutiny, though they sound appealing & he'll say that he's just conveying political or philosophical truth.
So a boy grows up in a culture where there is pervasive dishonesty but yet occasions when truth-telling is, perhaps without warning, regarded
as terribly important.
Corrosive effects of lies
The corrosive effects of lies between adults are frequently celebrated in contemporary literature. A review of a recent
novel says of one of the characters: "Klima (the
novelist) reminds us that Hana, too, is to be considered.
She has found out, by chance, that her husband has a lover & in the goodness of her heart she truly forgives him. But she weeps because he has deceived her & she doesn't know whether she'll ever believe him again."
Everyday life is seldom quite as clear as fictional life, but adults in real life do generally know that exposed lies
between partners are going to have lasting effects.
This knowledge doesn't always inhibit adults from lying to their intimates, but they rarely defend the lying itself. They'll rationalize it away if they can, but they rarely say that it's really OK to lie to an intimate.
In my talks with parents, however, I've met quite a few who have no reservations about
lying to their children. What about? Most often, about their own pasts & about subjects that intrinsically
make them uncomfortable.
I've learned of children who do not know that one of their parents was married & in some cases, had children, before
entering the marriage to which these children were born.
In conclusion
The tree of dishonesty has a number of separate branches. There is the branch of equivocation, deliberately using ambiguous or unclear expressions, intending to mislead.
This is what the aforementioned father was doing. It was true that the object in the bureau was a hand-rolled cigarette;
what he was falsely implying was that it contained ordinary tobacco. There's a branch called duplicity, speaking
in two different & mutually contradictory ways about the same subject to different parties, intending to deceive one or both.
Another branch is called distortion, willfully twisting something out
of its true meaning.
And there is lying, knowingly telling something one
believes is false with the intent that the hearer will believe it's true. Boys are capable of doing all of these, if they choose, at quite young ages.
None of these branches of dishonesty is to be confused with innocent errors. All of us say things that we believe to be true only to discover later that we were wrong. A large place has to be reserved in everyday life for unintentional
errors, for misconceptions & misperceptions.
Just as dishonesty has many branches, so honesty has many limitations or qualifications that keep the subject from being one of those "night & day" simplicities.
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Being Truthful
with Therapist
I've been seeing a therapist for several years for an anxiety disorder & depression. My problem is that I'm often dishonest with him.
Usually I lie by omission, but sometimes by commission. Well, lately I've been feeling like I should "come clean" but I'm afraid I'll totally shock him.
He's been my therapist for a long time & we've a good relationship. Basically I'm afraid he'll be really upset with me. I don't know how to go about setting things straight.
Do I write him a letter? Bring a list & read it to him? Take a deep breath & blurt it all out at once? Confess
one lie at every session for the next couple months? What?
Don't get me wrong, I haven't told
any really horrible lies. I mean, I'm not a serial killer or anything. But I frequently tell him less that the full story.
For example, I told him I had an affair with a married man, but I didn't tell him that it was w/my boss & that it
was ongoing.
I told him that I'm sometimes a heavy drinker on social occasions, but I haven't told
him about all the weekends that I spend alone by myself getting drunk.
I told him that I sometimes cut myself when I'm stressed, but I have led him to believe that it's mostly just superficial scratches. In fact, on several occasions I have cut myself badly enough to bleed all over the place & nearly pass out. (I never go to the E.R. because I know that E.R. drs hate self-injury patients).
Even one time when I got so dehyrdated that I got a bladder infection & I kept having to run to the bathroom during
my session, I didn't tell him what was going on (i.e., cutting myself every night for several days in a row & probably losing pints of blood).
I wanted to tell him but I was afraid he would freak out & probably call the cops for a 72-hour hold if I refused medical attention. Which I knew
he'd have to do if he was a half-way competent therapist, which he is, hence my dilemma.
Fortunately,
I haven't cut myself like that in over a year & I'm not drinking & as for my boss situation, I got transferred to
a different division & I told my (now
ex) boss that I won't have sex with him anymore unless
he gets a divorce. (He can't do anything to
me work-wise because he knows if I tell the company about our relationship, he's the one who'll get fired).
So I guess the therapy has had some positive effect on me in spite of myself. I'm finally at the point where want to talk to my therapist about these things but I can't
do it unless I admit to my past dishonesty & how can I do that?
Maybe I should
just quit this therapist & start over w/a clean slate with someone new?
Is this kind of dishonesty normal behavior in a client that my therapist will take in stride without getting angry at me?
I'd really like your opinion on how I should handle this. yeah I know I should just talk to him about it.... but that's the problem in a nutshell.
Two things are true...your therapy is only as good as you make it. The therapist is
a tool, a filter for re-directing your choices. If you're dishonest with him, then you're only dishonest with yourself.
Secondly, therapy is a process based on information...I spent 3 years treating a woman for one diagnostic profile when
she "oh, by the way-ed" me about a few things she'd left out. I had to start all over again.
Come clean
or you're only wasting your time, his time & someone's money.
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